On July 3rd, Dreweatts Bloombury is selling some plates from a 250-copy run of a book by Henri Matisse published at the end of his career during their prints and multiples sale in London. Given the success of the Tate Modern show of Matisse’s cut-outs, there should be interest in these works at this accessible level:

Taking inspiration from the circus he used a pair of scissors to cut lively shapes from brightly coloured gouache-painted paper creating a series of paper cut-outs, papier decoupés, which were published in Jazz, 1947, a limited-edition book containing colour pochoirs of the paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. Widely regarded as the most important artist’s book of the 20^th Century, it is scarce that individual plates from Jazz, such as these, should appear at auction.

A union between drawing and colour, Matisse called this dynamic style “painting with scissors”.

The combination of vivid colours with abstract and figurative subject matter evokes a glorious celebration of life against adversity. These highly sought after Jazz prints echo today as one of the most beautiful and ground-breaking series of 20^thcentury art.

Modern & Contemporary Prints 03 July 2014